Lenin suffered a series of debilitating strokes which lead to his death in 1924. After a brief power struggle, leadership of the Soviet Union was consolidated by the dictatorJoseph Stalin. Stalin's brutal reign would claim millions of lives, as known or suspected political opponents and military officers were executed or exiled to Siberia during the Great Purges of the 1930s.

By the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev implemented reforms such as glasnost and perestroika, but these measures were unable to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union after a failed military coup in 1991. The Russian Soviet Federal Republic declared its independence on August 24 of that year as the Russian Federation. Russia, as the Soviet Union's primary successor state, has since sought to maintain its global influence, but has been hampered by economic difficulties.

The Russian Federation is a federative democracy with a president, directly elected for a four-year term, who holds considerable executive power. The president, who resides in the Kremlin, nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister, who must be approved by parliament. The president can pass decrees without consent from parliament and is also head of the armed forces and of the national security council.

Russia's bicameral parliament, the Federative Assembly or Federalnoye Sobraniye consists of an upper house known as the Federative Council (Soviet Federatsii), composed of 178 delegates serving a four-year term (two are appointed from each of the 89 subdivisions), and a lower house known as the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), comprised of 450 deputies also serving a four-year term, of which 225 are elected by direct popular vote from single member constituencies and 225 are elected by proportional representation from nation-wide party lists.

The Russian Federation consists of a great number of different political subdivisions, making a total of 89 consituent components. There are 21 republics within the federation that enjoy a high degree of autonomy on most issues and these correspond to some of Russia's ethnic minorities. The remaining territory consists of 49 provinces known as oblasts and 6 regions (krays), in which are found 10 autonomous districts and 1 autonomous oblast. Beyond these there are two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Recently, seven extensive federal districts have been added as a new layer between the above subdivisions and the national level. All are listed here by these federal districts, with the republics marked by a *:

The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent Eurasia and as such knows a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of the landscape consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's highest point at 5,633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. Notable are the more central Ural Mountains that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia.

A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is still struggling to establish a modern market economy and achieve strong economic growth. Russia saw its economy contract for five years, as the executive and legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's industrial base faced a serious decline.

Russia achieved a slight recovery in 1997. The 1998 financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble, a debt default by the government, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. The economy subsequently has rebounded, growing by an average of more than 6% annually in 1999-2001 on the back of higher oil prices and a weak ruble.

This recovery, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, have raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for over 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices.